A.J. Daulerio

In last week's episode of Girls,one of the most groundbreaking boundary-pushing moments of uncomfortable realness occurred during a couch-sex scene between Elijah, Hannah's new gay roommate and ex-boyfriend, and Marnie, the ex-roommate and best friend, whose mesmerizing prettiness can no longer be taken for granted this season. This week's episode is primarily a metaphorical inspection of the couch for the cum/come stains left behind even though nobody came at all.

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In the opening scene we see that Elijah has confessed couch-sexing Marnie to his older gay boyfriend, George, who does not approve. "Elijah, you're a gay man!" George shouts at Elijah. Elijah disagrees because remember, George, he's always said on numerous occasions that he might be bisexual. George yeah-yeah's him for this stupidity and demands better answers from Elijah or else. Elijah fights for survival.

I fucked Marnie. Big Deal. So what. Don't leave?

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Elijah plans to make this memory disappear completely and fix everything by providing George with more specific details about the night he fucked Marnie on the couch. It was three pumps. Maybe two and a half. He lost his boner (he says boner again this week) so the fucking of Marnie was substandard but whatever. Don't leave?

"I want this." This is what Elijah tells George to convince him that the substandard fucking of Marnie will never, ever happen again. Elijah holds George's face with desperate tenderness, a move often deployed by people who don't know what they want, but who can still convince other people that they do.

That Silly Three-Pump Whatever Thing that happened that night aside, Elijah's attempts to minimize it only make old gay George grow more angry and wise. Men of his advanced age have patience and forgiveness but it is in short supply. Elijah is not a highly-evolved homosexual human and reveals that he has not told Hannah about that night he fucked Marnie on the couch. George is bewildered by Elijah's awfulness. A breakup happens but Elijah doesn't want it to happen right this minute. He would prefer to wait until the guilt subsides or the power dynamic in his arrangement masquerading as a relationship shifts back to him. Elijah's haphazard infidelity is forgivable; Elijah's manipulation is not. So farewell, you poof haircut with a young boy attached to it, and take this breakup like a man who has sex with women on uncomfortable couches. George exits the apartment with officious flair and off-camera the sound of a door shutting-not-slamming is heard.

These are the consequences rendered when you fuck Girls you're not supposed to fuck, gaywad.

Here is all the non-bisexual relationship news we find out in this episode:

We find Shoshannah and Ray laying in bed with each other thoroughly enjoying the pleasant vapidity of post-coital conversation, confident and comfortable that their love is true right this minute. We find Jessa and Thomas John in an apartment fantastic enough to overcompensate for his sublime assholeishness, confident and comfortable that their love is true right this minute. We find Hannah and Sandy making out on a couch, confident and comfortable their love is true right up until the point she asks him if he read her essay.

He says he didn't, but it turns out he did, and Hannah asks why he would do such a thing even though she knows the answer won't make her happy. She presses him for critcism because she can take it, you'll see.

"For starters it was very well-written," Sandy says, positively.

Hannah knows it's very well-written. This is useless information to her. Offer Hannah honest criticism so that she can react poorly to it even though she asked for it.

Sandy obliges. Off we go.

"I just didn't think anything happened [in this very well-written essay]. Ultimately it felt like I was just waiting in line and this [very well-written essay] was all that nonsense that goes through your brain when you're trying to kill time."

That's what Sandy meant by very well-written.

And you knew that you bitch so don't even.

But she does anyway.

It's at this point where the argument about the very well-written essay in which nothing happens ingnites the realest of real talks between Sandy and Hannah about race. Sandy accuses her of fetishizing token black men like a Brooklyn dingbat. Hannah thinks Sandy only sees her as another blob in the white blobby masses of females he takes joy in marginalizing. Then Hannah offers this fun fact she remembered and she'd like Sandy's opinion about this fun fact right at this exact moment: "Two out of three people on death row are black."

Here is a room. There is an elephant. We should talk to it now before more air escapes from this room. Again.

Too late. Shade has been thrown, for real this time. Hannah then decides to exit the relationship pronto because Sandy is also a Republican and his right-wing brain circuitry will never appreciate very well-written essays by white blobby masses of females. Also: gay marriage is good and guns are bad so GOODBYE, SANDY.

Back at the apartment shared by Hannah and Elijah, Marnie stands in the doorway, dressed in suspenders and hot pants. This is her new work outfit. After she was fired from the art gallery, she interviewed at other galleries, but she realized that there is not much money to be made in the art world if she sits behind a desk. Instead, she's chosen to become a hostess at a swanky restaurant club-thing frequented by old rich men, and expects to make $400 a night because she's super-pretty so why not and YOLO.

Meanwhile Marnie and Elijah are having a heated discussion about whether or not they should tell Hannah about the couch-sexing. Elijah just overpowers her with his super-fierce homo-ninja debate techniques and both their mouths remain shut for now.

It's perfect timing because Hannah has just returned from Sandy's and she's remarkably ha-oh-well about the breakup even though she enjoyed boning him so much. She grabs a tub of Cool Whip from the fridge and eats it with a spoon because she knows she's chubby and so what. Marnie takes a seat across from her and Hannah notices her suspenders and hot pants because she knows that Marnie's not chubby and so what. Marnie tells Hannah about her new job as a hostess.

Hannah is stunned. "A hostess?" she says, but actually means "EW YOU WHORE" and wishes her spoon were a garden shovel and that the Cool Whip tub was bottomless.

Marnie calmly defends her job choice, but Hannah says something about how she'd never work at a job where her sexuality was being exploited. Marnie exhales in a certain way which triggers this type of response from Hannah.

"You don't think I'm pretty enough for a pretty-person job!"

(But it's Hannah who thinks she's not pretty enough for a pretty-person job.)

Marnie's not rattled and retrenches. She fires a response she's probably used a gazillion times before on her less-pretty friend over the years "No, I think you're beautiful and you know that!"

(Marnie thinks Hannah's beauty is very well-written.)

At the end of this long, intense night Hannah is alone in her bed watching a YouTube video about how to trim your own bangs when out of the darnkness comes a text message from Adam. He's been sending her disquieting videos of him playing the guitar and crooning depressing songs he wrote about her. She thinks he's obsessed, even though she spent most of last year demanding his attention and girlfriend status. Once he gave it to her, surprise, she iced him. So far this episode she's described Adam as a socipath and murderous — not hot murderous, either, but real-deal axe murderous. We know that Adam and Hannah are too crazy-beautiful to live right now and that once the words of the text message are revealed nothing good can come of it:

"I'm downstairs."

He's downstairs for love, not murder, but Hannah can't diferentiate between the two when it comes to Adam.

She clicks her light off and pretends not to wait for what's next.

"I saw you turn your light off."

She tries to ignore the texts and adjusts her head on the pillow but then LOUD NONSENSE FROM A HUMAN MEANT TO STARTLE WILD ANIMALS occurs.

She screams like a girl afraid of murder-love.

It's just Adam he has a key, remember?

We see Adam in her bedroom doorway and he's so happy to be near her. He's not going to murder Hannah. Not tonight, not ever. He's lost the cast on his broken leg somehow but He probably chisled it off with a screwdriver or an old dirty fork so he could limp over to Hannah's apartment since she doesn't visit him anymore.

Hannah is annoyed and Adam is not welcome. They agitate their way through the smalltalk until Adam requests a glass of milk.

She goes to the fridge with her phone and presses 9-1-1 to make this murder-love vanish once and for all.

Adam drinks his milk and continues to be grabby and loud, all up in her face and in her space. She accuses him of raping her space. "Space rapist!," she calls him and now Hannah thinks she wants to break free forever so now's the time for her to snap:

"GO AWAY!"

She shoves Adam towards the front door.

"GO AWAY!"

She shoves Adam towards the front door.

"GO AWAY!"

She shoves Adam against the front door.

He's pinned there for a second and his heart could sure use that cast right about now.

You're stupid Adam, you took this way too far. She loves you, you giant freak, but be patient and sane. The best way to make this murder-love last forever was to stay away. Now you pressed too hard on the re-set button and it's probably ruined. So take your twisted space-raping m.o. back to your apartment, the one that's kept in purposeful disarray. You can mope in your mess until she's ready to talk to you like a human being but now or in the near future are not ...

And then the cops arrive just in time to break the spell.

"You called the Po-Po?" Adam asks her like a dope. They are standing in the stairwell looking at the two cops who've responded to Hannah's misguided call in to 911 due to a breakup emergency.

Yeah, now who's raping space? Definitely not the Cool Whip.

Hannah looks up at Adam, shamefully, hoping he'll forgive her for calling the Po-Po.

But it's too late for that now so Adam becomes unhinged and causes a scene like murderous charmers always do. He tells the two cops that he wants a restraining order against Hannah. He tells the cops she once showed up to his apartment wearing only knee socks. SHE'sthestalker! SHE'sthe crazy! SHE'stheproblem!

Hannah blushes and sighs and tells the Po-Po that she only showed up to his apartment uninvited in knee-socks one time. The Po-Po are unmoved.

The exchange between Adam and Hannah in the stairwell is ferocious but lovely because it portends a return to the terrible normalcy of their relationship. Hope is a super dynamo in Brooklyn tonight.

The cops handcuff Adam anyway because he has an unpaid parking ticket, an outstanding public urination charge and because he's being so Adam. They lead him down the stairs.

"I'm CRAZY! I'm CRAZY!" he yells with victorious defiance because he knows that Hannah still loves him in that murderous way.

"I'm sorry!" she yells from the top of the stairs like she means it this time.

"Talk to you later?" she guesses because what else do you say as Adam goes to jail.

There is no response.

But remember that two out of three people on death row are black. So the chances of Adam and Hannah's survival are still good.